I've been tracking this thread in silence for a few days while I nurse a
nasty cold. This has given me some time to think, and now I clear my throat
for a comment:

My take on this subject may differ because I may be one of the very few
white guys on this listserv who has been called a nigger. The first time was
when I worked as a teenager with some black men in a carpet warehouse. They
all called each other "nigger" with affection (and to make the white office
workers uncomfortable), and after they'd razzed me a few weeks to see what
kind of kid I was, they signalled my acceptance into the group and honored
me by calling me a nigger too. It was used casually and affectionately
during everyday work, but we also had great fun calling each other niggers
in front of the white office staff, who just didn't get it. The next time I
was called a nigger was about ten years ago when as fire commissioner I was
reorganizing the department and rewrote the 1950s style by-laws and added
grievance procedures. The word was used by an anonymous caller about 2 AM,
without a trace of affection. And I should make full disclosure that growing
up on Houston's south side in the 1950s and early 1960s, I used the word
myself, casually, without being aware of its power to hurt. So did my
friends, until we were 10 or 12 years old. Most of lit out for the territory
not long after.

I read HF to my daughter (uncensored) when she was 7 or 8, and explained
that this was how people talked in those days, and explained the attitudes
it reflected. Her mother and I never used the word, nor did her playmates,
and my daughter turned out just fine. I live now in a Wealthy White West
Austin neighborhood and none of my neighbors use the word either, but I can
assure you that a good many of them are as venal a racist as you could ever
hope to encounter. But they are well-mannered racists, and they would object
loudly to the use of the word in HF, or elsewhere.

There are two issues raised by reading HF to children. If it's your own
child, you are the best judge of how to explain it. I imagine black parents
explain it a bit differently than white parents. And perhaps it gets more
complicated if your children are not the same race as the parent who reads
the book. If you are teaching the book (to other people's children) then you
must be even more careful. If you are teaching it to a class of children of
various racial backgrounds, your job is enormously complicated, and you
should be aware of the hurt some children will feel. No amount of explaining
will make it hurt any less.

I've read most of the early reviews of HF in Lou Budd's excellent collection
of contemporary reviews of Twain's works, and I recall at least one review
that mentions the Concord banning and how misguided it was because the
Concord authorities must have assumed in error it was a book for children. I
don't recall any of the reviews expressing concern over the use of the word
"nigger." And I recall only a handful of the reviews that seemed to have
some faint grasp of the irony that runs beneath the surface of every episode
in the novel, and none at all that really understood the book in any way
approaching the modern sense of understanding.

Times have changed haven't they? Now most people understand the irony. It
took 100+ years of irony in modern American literature, but it finally sunk
in. But others get hung up on the word "nigger" --sometimes because they
ignore the irony, and sometimes for much better and valid reasons.

Before reading HF to a child (any kid under 15, your own or somebody else's)
I'd suggest looking through James Leonard's book, MAKING MARK TWAIN WORK IN
THE CLASSROOM, and also reading some of essays by black scholars who recall
having the book read in a classroom when they were a child seated among
white kids.

Pardon the disjointed structure of my comments. This was done under the
influence of several very good cold remedies.

Kevin Mac Donnell
Austin TX